Martial arts master Alexander Tevis spent billions saving the Volga in the Ivanovo region
In troubled water – 4
We continue to talk about how regions spend money allocated to save the Volga. In previous issues, we studied how things stand with this in the Tver, Yaroslavl and Kostroma regions. Next up is the Ivanovo region.
The length of the Volga riverbed in the Ivanovo region is 180 kilometers. There are two state programs in the region that can affect the condition of the great Russian river. The project “Improving the Volga” provides for the reconstruction of sewerage systems in the cities of Kineshma and Navoloki. Under the “Preservation of Unique Water Bodies” program, small river beds are being cleaned in the region.
About 80 thousand people live in Kineshma. At all times, the city discharged wastewater into the Kazokha (a tributary of the Volga) with almost no treatment. During the Soviet period, sewage was simply passed through a septic tank. In 2013, they tried to establish biological treatment, but local media wrote that the capacity of the equipment installed at that time was not enough. They started talking about the construction of modern treatment facilities in the city only in 2020, when they managed to get money for it from the federal budget.
“There is no point in connecting”
Initially, the object was valued at 1.7 billion rubles, and the completion date was set for December 2023. The EIS Procurement system indicates that the determination of the supplier for this lot has been completed, but the contract with the contractor has not been registered. But there is a contract for similar work worth 2.13 billion rubles. In it, the work is divided into three stages, the completion date of the last one is August 2024. The contractor was Energostroy LLC from Moscow. It can be assumed that after the company won the first tender for 1.7 billion, the conditions were changed, and as a result, an agreement for 2.13 billion appeared.
But that’s not all. Last year and this year, the authorities of the Ivanovo region awarded two more contracts – for work on the second and third stages of construction of wastewater treatment plants in Kineshma (for 943 and 525 million rubles). And both government orders also went to Energostroy LLC.
Thus, the company will develop more than 3.5 billion rubles at this facility.
All three phases should be completed by the end of this year. The only catch is that after this, Kineshma and two other neighboring towns (Navoloki and Zavolzhsk) will not stop pouring poorly treated wastewater into the rivers. The fact is that the authorities decided not to connect the existing city sewerage system to the new and expensive treatment plant. “There’s no point in this!” – explained the mayor of Kineshma Vyacheslav Stupin. According to the mayor, the existing networks have been in operation for a long time, they are clogged in places, badly worn out and accidents occur regularly. Therefore, the mayor’s office has developed a project for the construction of distribution networks throughout the city. And we must assume that it is these new networks that will be connected to the station being built today. They will cost…another 3.5 billion rubles.
Other questions remain. From Navolok to Kineshma, the Ivanovo Vodokanal built a collector for 300 million rubles in order to route sewerage through it to new treatment facilities. The problem is that in Navoloki there are no sewer networks. Only part of the streets is covered by the system laid in the middle of the last century. In addition, the collector in Kineshma itself has not yet been built, to which the collector from Navolok should be connected.
Wastewater from Zavolzhsk was also supposed to be sent to new treatment facilities in Kineshma. But there is not even a collector in this direction yet. And there is no money for it either, local media claim.
And another 3.5 billion!
So, what will the Ivanovo region receive at the end of 2024, when the “Improvement of the Volga” program formally ends? New treatment facilities in Kineshma cost 3.5 billion rubles and a 10-kilometer collector leading to it from Navolok cost 300 million.
Moreover, all this, as it now appears, cannot work! Sewage from the three towns will be drained into the tributaries of the Volga according to the previous scheme.
Therefore, formally everything seems to be being done correctly, infrastructure is being created for the years to come. But for some reason, one gets the impression that the work is planned in such a way that the performers can use federal funds as quickly as possible. It seems that the local authorities think about the improvement of the Volga at the very least.
Who became the main beneficiary of this construction? As already mentioned, the lion’s share of the funds was spent by Energostroy LLC. The director and founder of the enterprise is Alexander Tevis. The businessman is also known as the president of the Eurasian Federation of Aikibudo and Katori Shinto Ryu. The organization’s website says that he has been involved in martial arts for more than 30 years. Despite this status, we were unable to find any traces of Mr. Tevis’s public activity. The contract in the Ivanovo region, presumably, will allow his business to take off. In 2022, Energostroy’s revenue amounted to 5 billion rubles, in 2023 – already 6.8 billion. And net profit has doubled in recent years and exceeded 200 million rubles.
Another major contractor in this sewer story is Ivanovo Vodokanal. Locals assume that this particular company will be able to spend 3.5 billion on the construction of drainage networks in Kineshma.
The local press gives a figure for the cost of the new Kineshma sewerage system of 3.5 billion rubles with reference to the words of the city mayor. The amount does not yet appear in the documents. It is only known that Vodokanal has already received a contract for laying pipes along Aristarkh Makarov Street worth 492 million rubles. The work should be completed in December. One can only guess how long it will take to build a sewer system throughout Kineshma at this rate.
Vodokanal is owned by the city of Ivanovo, Ivanovo region. Last year, he received a record profit of 104.56 million with revenue of 1.7 billion rubles. From 2019 to 2022, a corruption scandal raged around the company. Its ex-manager Oleg Tikhonov was suspected of stealing 82 million rubles. The manager was arrested and then kept under house arrest, but in the end the case was closed.
As for clearing rivers in the Ivanovo region, the work here is not particularly large-scale. From 2019 to 2024, 2.3 kilometers of the Teza River were cleared (its total length is 192 kilometers). In fact, we are talking about part of the riverbed that passes through the regional center of Shuya. The river here was overgrown with reeds and turned into a swampy stream, and this despite the fact that it is a source of drinking water for the Shuyans. The EcoHydroTechnology company from St. Petersburg earned 21 million for clearing this site. This is not the company’s first contract in the region. In 2017, she already cleaned a section of the Vyazma River bed. The company does not have enough stars in the sky, but has been operating steadily since 2007.
They answer us
In the first part of our investigation, we noticed that the clearing of Lake Seliger in the Tver region is turning into some kind of secret operation. Work on the lake seems to be going on, but we were unable to find any information about this in official sources. To clarify the situation, Nasha Versiya sent a request to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Tver Region. It is clear from the department’s response that the tender was held without competition and was awarded to the so-called single supplier. The basis is the fact that the purchase is carried out as part of the implementation of national projects, financed, among other things, from the federal budget (the regional government has allowed itself to carry out purchases without a competition in such cases).
Thus, the clearing of Seliger was left to 3V Group LLC. The company will be able to use 103.8 million rubles allocated from the federal budget. Judging by open sources, the company was founded in 2016 in Rostov-on-Don Dmitry Larin. Its revenue is growing steadily and has already exceeded 400 million, while its profit fluctuates around zero. The company has tax debts, and recently lost a claim by an Astrakhan businessman for 5 million rubles. Rostov LLC rented a dump truck with a crew from him and did not pay. As you can see, the company fits into the range of contractors hired to improve the Volga in the Tver region, the negative facts about which lie on the surface.